


close your eyes

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: One Shot, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-10
Updated: 2007-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-19 17:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12414342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: He closes his eyes and counts to TEN - (a moment can tell a lifetime, and Sirius takes ten)





	close your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**Originally written for the creative arts newspaper at my school, it turns out that I am unable to write anything that isn't deeply rooted in the HP-verse. So, here you go - some Sirius angst.**

He never was the type to express regrets, never the type to mourn. He was always so vibrant, so reckless (so, so alive). But now he is old, broken and ugly, and nothing is what it used to be. So he sees her wand, dances back (a two-step of life and death, James would say), feels the flutter, closes his eyes, and counts back from TEN -

And he remembers the house, frozen in time, completely without time, timeless. He remembers it has he knew it, silent and cold, and yet noble and ancient. He remembers the lights of Christmas, and the sounds of his cousins, and the suppressive air of guilt and responsibility NINE. But he ignores the faces, and the voices, even though they creep into his memories, unbidden, like a plague or a termite, hell, even just mould. He tries to forget their faces, the knowing smirks or the tight frowns, but it always comes back, just when he thinks he's done it, just when he thinks he's won and then he hears their EIGHT voices.

He ran away exactly twelve times, wishing that they would find him, and he always came back, more resentful and sullen then before, and they would despise him more and more but he SEVEN kept coming back, drawn by responsibility and guilt. And he would ignore his brother's confused looks, and his parents' glower seething, and go to his bedroom and writes letters SIX to friends that he would never send.

When he finally can't stand it anymore, when they finally break him, it's his thirteenth attempt, and somehow that feels wrong. But then again, everything about that place was wrong, and that the wrongness of leaving is outdone by the wrongness of his home, well, then it's right, isn't it? The paradox made his brain hurt FIVE.

Then school was over, he never had a doubt that he would join the Order, that he would fight the good fight. So he joined, with his best friends, James, Remus and Peter (yes, even Peter, Peter who they'd all like to forget, Peter who never was brave enough, or strong enough, but Peter who had just enough balls to give them one last huzzah) and never regretted it, except FOUR when it took his best friends, his only real family, and everybody he ever cared about and when it landed him a nice, long life sentence for a crime he didn't commit.

He tries to think about the good times, now that he is able (the housewarming, his pathetic and dingy apartment, the birth of his niece, the marriage of his best friend, THREE and the small moments of happiness and normality that sprinkled the darkness and terror of normality), but Azkaban has robbed him of the ability: somehow, he can only remember the look on Regulus' face the last time he saw him, a week before the boy died, and the rush of hate - pure, antagonizing hate - toward Peter, the soul-crushing horror of losing James, the destructive doubt towards Remus and the loss of a family he never had. All he is able to know is that that the madness runs deep TWO and that he has always been a little mad.

And then all he can see is that perfect picture of a house, standing timeless and ancient, noble and pure, and the hurt and distant black eyes of a dark-haired boy, whose mouth twitched just so -

He opens his eyes, and with an echo of a smirk ONE sees no more. 


End file.
